Sony on Monday apologized for using a decapitated goat as the centerpiece of a video game launch party that sparked outrage from animal rights activists, and left at least one marketing expert wondering how such a big company could do something so stupid.
Sony Computer Entertainment in Europe threw the party last month in Greece to generate a buzz around the European launch of God Of War II, one of Sony’s most popular video games for the PlayStation 2. The event was for journalists invited from a select group of video game publications. In keeping with the bacchanalian nature of the violent, adult-only game, the party featured topless women dropping grapes into guests mouths and games that included throwing knives at a target and pulling live snakes from a pit with bare hands, the Daily Mail in London reported.
Among the games to test bravery was reaching into the guts of the freshly slaughtered goat, with its head dangling from threads of tissue, and eating what looked like animal intestines, but were actually Greek food. “They did a Fear Factor challenge to make people think they were eating the insides of the goat, but in fact it was a traditional Greek soup,” said Dave Karraker, spokesman for Sony Computer Entertainment in the United States.
Source: InformationWeek